Ulius Amoss, Leaderless Resistance, and the World Commerce Corporation

[Leslie Sharp]

. . . Author Albarelli had picked up on Ulius Amoss while pursuing the death of Frank Olson, writing, “According to a 1943 letter by [George Hunter] White to another FBN agent, [Harold] Abrahamson and [Frank] Olson had attended the session because they were interested in pursuing “aerosol delivery possibilities with Lowe’s acetate.” Also observing the effectiveness of these interrogation-drug sessions were OSS officers Charles Siragusa and Ulias [sic] C. Amoss . . . Siragusa and Amoss had come to New York for a meeting regarding what White referred to as the “Mafia Plan,” an OSS assassination program.” White had applied the less than crafty code name to the assassination program run jointly by CIA and FBN that was just then coming into existence. 

 

Siragusa, who was familiar enough with Thomas Eli Davis, Jr. to remark on his loyalty to the cause, and Amoss had both traveled to NY for a meeting regarding what Hunter White referred to as the Mafia Plan. Amoss’s involvement in the truth drug experiments is notable in context of his later concept for leaderless resistance whereby a small, tight knit group of individuals that could operate without any deemed central control. It is not a stretch to assert that active participants in Dealey Plaza fit a specific profile including the ability to “operate without any deemed central control.” Today, the model is favored worldwide by countless terrorist cells, as well as extremists groups in the United States.

Amoss’s Spider’s Web

Prior to America’s active involvement in WWII, according to Julius Amoss, the government seized control of his private businesses. He had invested in a number of companies that fed into the military contracting apparatus, including Shirgun Corp., a.k.a. Schirgun. The company’s primary product was a gun bolt lock invented by Henry Schirokauer. Another investment was Boston Metals Processing Corp., in the business of heavy scrap metal. A third, GramTrade International was an export-import business. The three companies share a similar profile of corporations that eventually came under the umbrella of the World Commerce Corporation, cofounded by Amoss’s boss, Bill Donovan and British spy William Stephenson. According to prolific researcher/author John Bevilaqua who provided author Albarelli with invaluable context, a vice president of Boston Metals, Harold B. Chait transported money from the company and also the Baldt Anchor and Chain Company using trust accounts at The Bank of Maryland to the South Florida Soldiers of Fortune who put the funds into the hands of a ragtag army. “Both companies were CIA fronts for laundering money,” asserts Bevilaqua. 

            The allegation makes a good deal of sense of the remarks made by Chait’s wife on October 18, 1962. As President of the Baltimore Women’s Committee for Cuban Freedom during a speech before the members, Phyllis Chait casually revealed that “one of the more fascinating aspects of CIA operations in Cuba is its method of supplying arms and ammunitions to Cuban liberation groups. Time and again, CIA cutters make their dash to Cuba and deliver such items as .45-caliber Thompson machines guns and .30-caliber ammunition…” explaining that there was a method in the agency’s madness of delivering unmatched weapons and ammunition. 

            Mrs. Chait would have been familiar with those Thompson machine guns because her husband and his investor, Ulius Amoss who, before passing away in November 1961, had enjoyed significant funding for his private intelligence operation from financier Clendenin J. Ryan, Sr. was invested heavily in Thompson Machine Guns corporation, Russell Maguire’s partner in the military contractor. “I have heard former Castro gunrunners laughingly describe how they were sometimes given official escort when they wheeled Castro’s munitions through the streets of Miami. . . .” The committed anti-communist told her mutually aligned friends, adding that, “long before Castro launched his revolution in Mexico, Robert C. Hill, our ambassador to that country warned bluntly, that Castro had surrounded himself with Communists and that Communist aid and direction was paramount in his movement.” As mentioned in the foreword of this book, Ambassador Hill was a close friend to the family of author Albarelli and responsible for a seminal moment leading to key evidence that exposes the conspiracy to kill JFK in Dallas.

            From Doug Valentine’s Strength of the Wolf, we learn that Col. Amoss and George Hunter White—who featured significantly in the clandestine life of Pierre Lafitte—first met in February 1942 while working on the “Eliopoulos case” with White’s protégés, FBN Agent Charlie Siragusa and Charlie Dyar. Elias Eliopoulos was a Greek known as the “top-hat overlord of dope,” described as having given definitive shape to the modern underworld of drugs. Valentine tells us that by March 1943, White and Amoss were investigating “the frequent tie-up” between smuggling and spying, personified by Eliopoulos, until Bill Donovan fired Amoss for importing “an ex-convict from the United States for the purposes of expert assassination.” (Credible sources insist that Amoss never left Donovan’s fold.) 

            While in Greece, Amoss had orchestrated various casino operations in order to facilitate spying, at the same time his Nazi counterpart, Otto Begus was pursuing similar activities. This is important because Begus features significantly in the papers of Otto Skorzeny, as does Merwin K. Hart whose National Economic Council also enjoyed the financial largesse of the Ryan family, the same Bridgeport, CT based arms manufacturers that backed Ulius Amoss’s ISI after the war. 

[Leslie Sharp]

Further to Ulius Amoss

ISI, the private intelligence agency founded by “leaderless resistance” mastermind Amoss, was also funded by Russell Maguire. Of note, in addition to Charles Willoughby, trustees who carried the torch of ISI following the death of Amoss in November 1961, included chairman of Baltimore Savings and Loan, Henry P. Irr, who as head of the National Savings and Loan Association would cochair a senate subcommittee with banker Samuel W. Hawley of Bridgeport, CT, the father-in-law of soldier of fortune Thomas Eli Davis, Jr., in 1963. And as noted, the vice-chair of ISI Trustees was Richard F. Cleveland who in his capacity during the Alger Hiss scandal would have encountered Robert L. Morris, the future president of the Dallas branch of the John Birch Society. 

            The ISI mirrored somewhat the profile of an organization known to American and British intelligence as “Nightingale,” identified in Dick Russell’s The Man Who Knew Too Much. This murky group further described by Miles Copeland, former CIA official, was made up of “aging emigres from Czarist Russia, joined by a smaller number of disillusioned Soviet Communists” which formed a near fanatical secret organization. Their cohesiveness was greatly enhanced by the financial support they got from a multimillionaire American who was involved in a one-man crusade against “the evils of Communism.” As we read in the next chapter, Nightingale was the notorious unit of Ukrainian soldier/mercenaries devoted to the founders of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Yaroslav Stetzko and Stepan Bandera. 

            Amoss had amassed an eclectic cadre of informers committed to wiping out communism. As we will read in a later chapter, the multimillionaire American was most likely H. L. Hunt, although he was far more often referred to as “that Texas multimillionaire” instead of “an American multimillionaire”; however, as we will read, two other US candidates of great wealth that launched private, rabid anti-communist intelligence gathering apparatuses, surface in the investigation.

            During the war, Amoss teamed up with the enigmatic George Hunter White when White’s circle of powerful cohorts was wide, particularly for a man in his early 30s. Among them was Major Hugh Angleton, described by a friend as a red-faced farm boy from Boise, Idaho who had gained infamy for having joined in the chase of Pancho Villa. When Hugh Angleton’s son, James Jesus, was drafted directly out of college into Donovan’s OSS, the ethics-challenged White befriended him based solely on the high esteem he held the Major. Max Corvo, the head of OSS intelligence in Italy from 1943 thru May 1945 said of Hugh Angleton, “he was ultra conservative, a sympathizer with Fascist officials. He was certainly not unfriendly with the Fascists.” No doubt influenced by his father, as mentioned in Jeff Morley’s The Ghost, James Angleton preferred collaborating with fascists to enabling Communists, the same as his boss Allen Dulles.

The Dominican Republic Assumes Center Stage

Under questioning by Warren Commission counsel Albert Jenner who was an attorney for military contractor General Dynamics (the military contractor lobbied for in Congress by Bobby Baker, written about at length in Chapter 4) lurched from what seemed to be an unrelated line of questioning to enquire of witness George de Mohrenschildt very specifically: “Did you have any contact with the Dominican Embassy in 1958? In a somewhat elusive response, de Mohrenschildt said, “I think I was invited to—Dominican Embassy. Yes… Yes. I was trying to work up some kind of concession, I think. I was working on some kind of oil deal, and tried to contact the Dominican Ambassador—purely for business reasons—some kind of an oil project which had to do with the Dominican Republic.” DeMoya had served as Trujillo’s ambassador to DC at the time. 

            Also active in the affairs of Trujillo was professional mercenary Mitch WerBell in the same timeframe as Johnson’s presence in and out of the country alongside his brother, William, who worked for an anti-communist publication in the DR. Contributing to this hypothesis that Lafitte’s “E. Johnson’s” is Robert Emmett Johnson, is mention of oil attorney Herbert Itkin, the double agent for the FBI and CIA, active in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic, in the same entry. As revealed, not only was Itkin involved with business interests of George de Mohrenschildt who was alleged to have been in Haiti from the spring of 1963 until after the assassination, but, as a DC based petroleum attorney with interests in the Dominican Republic, Itkin crossed paths with loyalists to Trujillo, including Trujillo’s ambassador to the US, Manual de Moya Alonzo and J. Russell Maguire. 

            According to a memo for J. Edgar Hoover dated Oct 29, 1959, from the Army Asst. Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Industrial and Personnel Security Group, as follow up to Maguire’s request for a high-level security clearance, Maguire and de Moya had mutual investments and oil interests. As noted in the report, Maguire’s 1957 correspondence containing allegations of “vital nature to national security,” made its way to the top, to Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy.          Army intel then advised the FBI director that “in 1958, a check in the amount of $24,950 was deposited into the account of a publication owned by Maguire. The check drawn on the account of then Ambassador DeMoya, gave rise to the whether or not there was an obligation to register as a foreign agent.” The report further states, “through our coverage of Dominican activities, we learned DeMoya had made substantial payments to Maguire who is known to be sympathetic toward Dominican regime” . . . and that Maguire had carried articles favorable to Trujillo in his magazine, the American Mercury. 

            In light of industrialist Russell Maguire’s significant financial support of Merwin K. Hart’s National Economic Council, juxtaposed with Merwin Hart’s extensive business dealings with Otto and Ilse Skorzeny, war profiteer Maguire warrants additional scrutiny. 

Edited August 24, 2023 by Leslie Sharp